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The Books of Enoch: A Complete Volume (Click here to view on Diglotting)
The author, Joseph Lumpkin, has authored many books on the Old and New Testament pseudepigraphal writings. This book contains translations (with notes) on the three different books ascribed to Enoch.
For those unaware of what 1, 2, & 3 Enoch entail, here is a brief summary. The book of 1 Enoch is a collection of a handful of separate documents written over a period of about three centuries prior to Christ which were eventually collected together into one single work. It is also called “Ethiopic Enoch” due to it being extant in manuscripts written in Ethiopic preserved by the Ethiopian church, although it is now known from Greek manuscripts as well.
The book of 2 Enoch, also known as “Slavonic Enoch” or “Secrets of Enoch”, is preserved in Slavonic manuscripts, although last year fragments of it were found in Coptic manuscripts. It has been dated to both the start and the end of the first millennium, with quite a few scholars holding to an original composition from pre-70 AD that was later heavily interpolated by Christians.
3 Enoch, also called “Hebrew Enoch” or “Revelation of Metatron”, purports to have been written by Rabbi Ishmael in the second century, although it can only be traced back to the fifth century. The general gist of this book is about Enoch’s ascension to heaven and his subsequent transformation into Metatron.
The back cover of the book says “For the first time, the major books making up the Enochian literature are presented to the public in a single volume.” This is not quite true because I am aware of one other book which does contain all three books of Enoch, which is, James Charlesworth’s The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments.
Lumpkin starts off this volume with an introductory chapter on Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the books of Enoch in particular. There is also an extended introduction at the start of 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch which dives into more detail regarding the text, themes, etc. This book is quite a good way to get familiar with the books of Enoch. The translations used in this book for 1 & 2 Enoch are largely based off the translations of R.H. Charles and others, although Lumpkins has revised such things as sentence structure as well as the text itself (using recent information from commentaries and other sources). I think the translation of 3 Enoch is Lumpkins revised version of the original translation done by Dr. Odeberg in 1928.
Helpful comments are interspersed throughout the translations. Some are quotations of biblical books which the author feels are reminiscent to the text, others are explanations to clarify the text. Personally, I would have preferred the commentary to be placed in footnotes and it may have been more helpful to have included more comments explaining the text (the books of Enoch can be hard to follow if you do not have a commentary to help you along). Another thing that bothered me was that the type of text was different for each of the three books. The text of 1 Enoch was in bold, the text of 2 Enoch was not in bold, and the text of 3 Enoch was in a larger font than that of 1 & 2 Enoch.
All in all, it is still quite a good introductory book for the layman who wants the text of the three books of Enoch. It is definitely the most inexpensive book containing 1, 2, & 3 Enoch available.
***
The Book of Enoch – A Complete Reference & Guide (Click here to view on Diglotting)
The book of 1 Enoch (a.k.a. Ethiopic Enoch) is a collection of five main books and two short appendices which claim to be accounts from the Enoch. They were written at various times during the last few centuries B.C., as well as the first century A.D. It is quite an important non-canonical book to study as it contains a lot of information about traditions that developed in Judaism and presents a common worldview in second-Temple Judaism of apocalyptism, which considers the world to be full of wickedness and in imminent danger of divine judgment.
The translation of 1 Enoch that is used here is taken from the standard translations of R.H. Charles and Richard Laurence, but it is also supplemented by more recent information on the text of 1 Enoch, as well as making the text sound more like modern English instead of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Lumpkin provides a 25 page introduction to 1 Enoch, which ably shows the importance of 1 Enoch to biblical studies. The book of 1 Enoch had an influence on the New Testament authors and writings, though as to what extent is unknown. The New Testament epistle of Jude directly quotes from the first chapter of 1 Enoch. Throughout this book, Lumpkins provides a lot of quotations to New Testament texts which he feels offer evidence of possible influence by 1 Enoch, as well as quotations from the Old Testament which may have been used as sources by the authors of 1 Enoch. There are also other comments injected throughout the text of 1 Enoch to help explain confusing passages or to illuminate the text further. Although I think it would have been better to contain them to footnotes instead of placing them throughout the text of 1 Enoch. I think for the cheap price this book sells for, it is a very good introductory look at 1 Enoch.
